Monday, November 21, 2011

My cell phone wakes me with a message. It's a patient with a relatively urgent question.

I knew the call would take a while, so stopped in the bathroom, then walked to my home office, flipped on my computer, and opened the patient's chart. This took maybe 5 minutes from the original message.

Then I dialed him up.

Dr. Grumpy: "This is Dr. Grumpy, returning a call."

Mr. Etiquette: "Um, huh, oh."

Dr. Grumpy: "You called me?"

Mr. Etiquette: "Man, you just woke me up."

Dr. Grumpy: "Sorry. What can I do for you?"

Mr. Etiquette: "Took you long enough to call back, and I dozed off again. I can't believe you woke me up."

If he called you at 2am, he either needed to go to the ER for a concerning symptom or he needed something called in, right? Did he think he was going to get either of those things accomplished in 5 min? Sheesh.

Well ... People aren't quite themselves when they've just woken up ... Dr. Grumpy seemed to be okay, but maybe he was still out of it ... I'm going to go away imagining him face-palming extremely hard later that morning when he was really and truly awake.

I find it frightening that some commenters are trying to excuse this inane behavior. Such inconsideration and rudeness toward someone who is trying to help you should never be tolerated... I can only imagine those people never have to work with the general public.

guy is off his meds..on the wrong meds or took the wrong dosage or combination of meds. In any case, I hope he is not a surgeon, car mechanic, air traffic controller of one of the joint chiefs of staff or the owner of a deadly weapon...

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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Note: I do not answer medical questions. If you are having a medical issue, see your own doctor. For all you know I'm really a Mongolian yak herder and have no medical training at all except in issues regarding the care and feeding of Mongolian yaks.